Chinese steel workers kill manager

[Tower of Bebel]

From Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article6728604.ece)

July 27, 2009
China steel plant takeover scrapped after manager killed

Citing a local policeman who gave only his surname, Wang, the China Daily said that Mr Chen's murder happened because many Tonghua employee-shareholders were angry at the prospect of losing their jobs.

"Chen disillusioned workers and provoked them by saying most of them would be laid off in three days," Mr Wang said.

In an announcement on state-run Jilin Television, the provincial government later ordered Jianlong to drop its takeover plans, the Beijing News reported.

The protest and the death of the executive from the takeover company comes as China's Communist Party leadership in Beijing attempts to streamline the country's bloated steel industry, the world's largest by output. The industry, long dominated by local governments, is resisting.

Word of the protest, which happened on Friday, first emerged on Sunday in a report from the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.

The China Daily reported that the protest involved only 3,000 workers and the Xinhua News Agency put the number as low as 1,000. Foreign news reports on the incident were blocked on the Internet in China.

The human rights report said that workers were angry that Mr Chen was paid about three million yuan (£267,000) last year, while Tonghua pensioners got as little as 200 yuan a month.

The steel workers clashed with riot police, beat Mr Chen and then blocked ambulances, police and government officers from reaching him, the newspaper said. Mr Chen, who was in his 40s, is believed to have died at 8 pm on Friday.

The report said that the protest by the workers also left more than 100 people injured.

The Times was unable to reach officials at Tonghua Iron & Steel or representatives of Jianlong Steel.

The planned takeover, begun when Jianlong bought 36 per cent of Tonghua in 2005, was complicated last year when a fall in the price of steel triggered losses at Tonghua and Jianlong threatened to pull its investment.

As China's building boom continued this year and steel prices shot up, Tonghua reported a 43 million yuan profit in June and Jianlong announced that it would bid to become Tonghua's majority shareholder.

[Pogue]

Haha, good on them!

[Ol' Dirty]

When workers have to fight against riot police just to get sustenance in a 'socialist' country, the country isn't socialist.

[Kukulofori]

Hell YES.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

I believe this brave action merits a very loud

HELL YEAH!

[MilitantWorker]

Here's the link to a CNN video that gives some interesting details. Link (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2009/07/27/vause.china.steel.protest.cnn)

On Friday the Workers apparently decided on a work stoppage and factory occupation. The number of workers at the plant is about 30,000 from most sources I've seen. This implies that mass assemblies would had to have happened in order for the workers to act in a collective manner i.e. work stoppage/occupation. They even erected barricades.

Another interesting point is that CNN says that a "delegation of workers" went to the new factory manager in order to (presumably) open some sort of dialogue. The new manager then demanded the workers return to work, and the workers attacked and beat the manager, possibly even throwing him down a flight of stairs.

The presence of a "delegation of workers" implies that the 30,000 factory workers (possibly in mass assemblies?) went so far as to choose a "delegation" to represent the larger body of workers. And then of course there's the striking militancy of the workers.

I think this is even further evidence that the international working class is entering a open period of struggle against capital and the world wide ruling classes, aggravated by the widening economic crisis. At the very least we are leaving a period of counterrevolution and non-action of the proletariat.

[Communist Theory]

It would be cool if they did a badass karate move that involved exploding heart and livers to kill him.

[Ol' Dirty]

:lol: That's horrible...

And karate is from Okinawa. :laugh:

This guy says so:

http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2005/11/25/image1075655g.jpg

[MilitantWorker]

Has anyone seen legend of the drunken master with Jackie Chan?

It's set in imperial China and the workers at a steel plant go on strike and Jackie Chan ends up killing the bosses with his Drunken Boxing style..

Oddly similar minus Jackie Chan..

[*Red*Alert]

HURRAY!

If only the Worker's of the World would unite and do this to some other bosses.

Its sad to see that they have to fight against the system in a supposedly "socialist" nation though. :crying:

[ckaihatsu]

I think we *all* are fortunate that this particular event happened to be noticed by the corporate press -- according to the report at the bottom of this post there have been *hundreds* of offings of managers in 2009 in China. It reminds me of the 'fraggings' of U.S. army officers during the Vietnam War.

With such a dramatic example of the class struggle at our disposal I think we need to press this with people we come into political conversations with -- would *you* support mass workers' actions even if they inadvertently (or otherwise) led to the demise of a factory manager?

This is a solid political line, from the real world, that can really determine a person's politics -- which side are you on?





Let me put it starkly: Would you support *the workers* if *they* decided to use some punishments of their own while resisting the capitalists' punishments? (We don't even have to wait for revolutionary conditions to come about -- it's happening already!)





Mob beats Chinese steel factory executive to death


Thousands of workers had gathered in northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua to protest the takeover of their company and threatened layoffs.

July 27, 2009

Chinese state media confirmed Monday that a steel factory executive was beaten to death after thousands of workers gathered to protest the takeover of their company.

Chen Guojun, an executive at Jianlong Steel Holding Co., died Friday after an angry mob in the northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua beat him and then blocked ambulances from reaching him, according to the China Daily.

The protesters worked at the state-owned Tonghua Iron and Steel Group, which was going to be sold to Chen's privately owned Jianlong Steel. Chen sparked the riot by announcing 30,000 workers would be laid off, the newspaper said.

They dispersed later only after they were assured by authorities the sale would not go through.

-- David Pierson

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-china-mob27-2009jul27,0,3235364.story






Protesting Chinese steel workers kill manager

By John Chan
28 July 2009


> Workers were also incensed by the fact that Chen was paid three million yuan ($US 440,000) a year—about 300 times their average wage—while workers retired from the plant received as little as 200 yuan ($29) a month.

> The magazine also noted that in the first two months of 2009, more than 500 private businessmen and senior executives were murdered, as a result of not paying, or cutting, wages or because of the intensifying exploitation of workers. The latest protest by Tonghua workers indicates that class relations in China are reaching boiling point.


http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/chin-j28.shtml

[Misanthrope]

Good riddance you capitalist pig.

[cyu]

would *you* support mass workers' actions even if they inadvertently (or otherwise) led to the demise of a factory manager?

This is a solid political line, from the real world, that can really determine a person's politics -- which side are you on?

I'd be on their side, but that doesn't mean I'd support their strategy.

Excerpt from http://www.revleft.com/vb/sony-france-employees-t103921/index.html?t=103921&highlight=france

So let me give you a few examples of tactics that I do not think are smart: beating up the executives, killing the executives, dismembering the executives, putting the executives in a blender, cutting open the skulls of the executives and eating their brains. It just gets silly after a while, and is not going to win you more supporters.

Capitalists would love it if the only tactics that union members can think of are tactics that will turn off the local community. Work-stoppage strikes are one example - if the union stops work, then the local community is hurt because they are no longer getting the services they depend on. Capitalists can then use this discomfort in the local community as a weapon against the strikers. To prevent this, I would instead encourage "working strikes" - strikes in which union members disobey the executives, but continue to serve the local community.

Another criticism I have against this action is that it is still putting the power in the hands of the executives - in other words, they still assume that they have to change the minds of the executives before they can get anything done. That is not what real direct action is about. You're not after changing the minds of the executives or the politicians - you implement the policies you want regardless of what they want. Forget about changing their minds, just assume democratic control - voluntarily giving them the power to decide your lives is thinking like a slave.

[PRC-UTE]

I didn't see anything about this in the article, are the people thought to be involved being arrested or what?

[khad]

I didn't see anything about this in the article, are the people thought to be involved being arrested or what?

Apparently the workers are not getting blamed for this; the merger is off. One thing that isn't mentioned in this article is that Jianlong is privately owned, while Tonghua is a state enterprise, proving yet again that state jobs are still some of the most desirable in China.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/29/china-blames-officials-riots


China blames incompetent bosses for industrial riots Poor governance blamed for violence where steel boss was beaten to death




Tania Branigan (http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/taniabranigan) in Bejiing and agencies
guardian.co.uk (http://www.guardian.co.uk/), Wednesday 29 July 2009 17.25 BST
Article history (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/29/china-blames-officials-riots#history-byline)

Riots and other large-scale unrest are often caused by incompetent officials handling their work badly, China (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/china)'s state news agency said today in an unusually stringent opinion piece.

The article blamed poor governance for last week's violence in Jilin, northern China, when thousands of steel workers beat to death the executive of a rival company that was mounting a takeover bid. The rioters feared massive job cuts.

Xinhua said local governments too often blamed unrest on "people who did not know the real situation being egged on".

That was just an excuse, it said, adding: "In recent years, when large-scale mass incidents happen, more often than not local governments have not done their job properly and have dealt inappropriately with problems.

"Isn't the Tonghua [steel firm] case about not caring about the interests of the workers during a restructuring? … People just want to have a stable life."

The commentary also attacked officials in Weng'an, in south-west Guizhou, where 30,000 residents rioted last year over rumours of a murder cover-up.

Four senior cadres were fired subsequently and the provincial leader said local officials had been "rude and rough-handed" in dealing with disputes.

Last week, the highbrow news magazine Southern Window criticised the handling of a massive protest in Shishou, central China last month.

Xinhua blamed such protests on general lawlessness in the areas and officials' "rough work ethic and simple way of doing things".

While officials are often sacked following major unrest, it is usually lower ranking cadres who carry the can.

The article did not mention the vicious inter-ethnic violence that broke out this month in the Xinjiang region, killing at least 197 people.

Central authorities have repeatedly stressed the need to maintain social stability, in the face of economic uncertainties and ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic in October.

"Mass incidents" have risen steeply in China in recent years and are often fuelled by land seizures, pollution, judicial unfairness and industrial conflicts.http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/killing-ends-takeover-of-steel-group-in-china/


Slaying Ends Takeover of Steel Group in China
July 27, 2009, 9:33 am

The provincial government of Jilin ordered Jianlong Group of China to abandon a buyout of state-owned Tonghua Iron & Steel Group after workers protesting job losses killed a manager, state-run Beijing News said Monday.

The instruction, announced via Jilin’s television network last night, also ordered Beijing-based Jianlong to never again take part in any reorganization plan of Tonghua, Bloomberg News reported. Closely held Jianlong had been Tonghua’s second-largest shareholder since 2005, Xinhua News Agency said separately.

The incident underscores the increasingly violent disputes in China from northwestern Xinjiang province to southern Guangdong, as the global economic crisis brings simmering conflicts to a head, Liu Kaiming, a labor-relations researcher in China, told the news service.

A Jianlong Steel Holding Company representative, Chen Guojun, was killed at a facility run by Tonghua Iron and Steel Group, in northeast China’s old industrial heartland, China Daily reported.

It was the second time Jianlong had begun a takeover bid for the state-run giant, and many feared the company planned to drain state assets before imposing cost-cutting measures.

“Chen disillusioned workers and provoked them by saying most of them would be laid off in three days,” a police officer who identified herself only as Wang told China Daily.

Also, it says here that a few workers were detained by police, but all were released without charges:

http://www.china.org.cn/china/news/2009-07/28/content_18217863.htm

[MilitantWorker]

I don't think the taking of a life is ever truly justifiable or reasonable. It can always be avoided in situations like this where people are just angry.

"Bossnappings", as they are called, are on the rise all over the world. Especially in France, it seems to be a quite popular tactic. It has the same effect as killing the boss in the long term, plus it doesn't allow the bourgeois media to vilify the workers. In fact, I remember hearing one story about a boss that was kidnapped..he was relating the story to the media, who were expecting to hear some brutal horror stories. Instead the boss said he was treated very well, and fed with wine and salmon.

Killing one capitalist at a time won't bring down capitalism. Workers taking political power and acting collectively as a class will.

Another point that should be understood is that China is as capitalist as it gets. There is no difference between working for some transnational corporation or the Chinese state (which really is itself a large corporation). When surplus labor still exists, when workers have to work more than is socially necessary for their well-being--- that's capitalist exploitation. Whether the surplus value, or profit, ends up in the hands of individualist capitalists or a capitalist bureaucracy..it's still being extracted. Workers are still being exploited.

[Comrade in arms]

:( what has this world come to....

[seventhparadise]

:( what has this world come to....

Agree comrade ;)

[RedStarOverChina]

Finally, some good news from China!:)

[Trystan]

:( what has this world come to....

I guess we could set ourselves on fire instead?!

Praise Buddha.

[Axle]

Much support to the steel workers, although I'm not entirely happy with them killing the manager.

[LeninKobaMao]

Haha, good on them!

That was exactly what I was going to say when I clicked on this post... weird. :confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:

[Tower of Bebel]

http://socialistworld.net/pics2/cwi/sw/sw.gif (http://socialistworld.net/eng/2009/07/2805.html)
http://socialistworld.net/pics2/cwi/sw/cwi_eng.gif

28 July 2009

China

Manager beaten to death in steel privatisation battle

30,000 workers fighting for jobs and pensions in northeast China

chinaworker.info reporters

A fight against privatisation and asset-stripping by 30,000 steel workers and retired steel workers in northeastern Jilin province resulted in a boss getting beaten to death on Friday 24 July. The incident has attracted global publicity, as a sign of the explosive social tensions in China as the global capitalist crisis continues. It also undermines government attempts to portray violence in Xinjiang province as exceptional, and the work of outside forces.

Around 10,000 workers and 20,000 retired workers have been protesting the sale of state-owned Tonghua Iron & Steel to the private Beijing-based Jianlong Steel Holding Company, which threatened drastic job cuts and loss of pension entitlements. Chen Guojun of Jianlong, the newly named ‘interim general manager’ of Tonghua was beaten to death by workers who had shut down the steel mill to prevent its take-over by Jianlong. Chen enraged a crowd of workers when he announced that staff numbers at Tonghua would be cut from 30,000 to 5,000. During the protest action on Friday 24 July, more than 3,000 workers kept riot police at bay for almost the whole day. The workers occupied the steel mill and also blocked a railway track, preventing supplies reaching the plant, and forcing the company to suspend production for 11 hours. About 100 people were injured in clashes with riot police, the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy wrote:
“Chen disillusioned workers and provoked them by saying most of them would be laid off in three days,” said a Tonghua police officer named Wang, quoted in the state-run China Daily. “Chen, saying that a total number of 30,000 employees would be cut to 5,000, infuriated the crowd.”

The English language Beijing News carried a report that the fighting started when workers demanded a meeting with Chen. The workers refused his order to return to work, battered him with boots and pushed him from a second-storey office, the newspaper said. A Reuters report, however, claimed Chen Guojun was thrown down some stairs to his death. Workers continued to block access to the factory, including for medical staff, because they feared their struggle would be lost if police and officials took control of the premises before their demands were met. Police were pelted with water bottles, although some reports claim bricks were thrown. The workers called off their action late in the evening, once it was announced that the Jianlong takeover had been shelved permanently.

Media comment

“Makes those French militants and their crazy boss-napping antics look positively small-time by comparison,” commented the business website managementtoday.com. “Surely there’s a lesson for recession-hit bosses everywhere in that?” it added. On domestic websites there was a flurry of comment. “Almost all were sympathetic to the plight of workers losing their jobs as part of China’s privatisation programme,” noted Sky News.

According to comments posted online, Chen infuriated workers with his “high-handed” attitude. Steel workers at Tonghua and throughout state-owned industry have suffered pay cuts as a result of the crisis. Meanwhile, Chen Guojun received an annual salary of 3 million RMB ($500,000) last year, according to media reports. This compares with Tonghua Steel’s retired workers who each receive only 200 RMB ($29) a month for living expenses.

“Workers may feel the state has sold them down the river, especially if there are layoffs or if the private investor moves in their own people,” commented Wang Erping of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Psychology. “Such protests pose a headache for the government – and any potential investors in privatised steel factories – since China lacks independent unions and limits legal options for workers to get their complaints heard.”

Steel sector ‘consolidation’

The Tonghua case is typical of China’s privatisation programme and how this is being stepped up in strategic industries like steel that face massive overcapacity. As Reuters correspondent Lucy Hornby points out, “That has meant opting for modern plants and laying off workers at state-owned firms while promoting well-paid executives trained in capitalist finance, a process that can get ugly, especially in economically depressed areas like northeast China.”

The central government wants to speed up ‘consolidation’ of the industry in the teeth of the current global crisis. Steel output in China is once again expanding rapidly, fuelled by a huge stimulus programme and flood of cheap credit. But at the same time, global demand for steel is falling sharply. China now has 160 million tonnes of excess capacity, according to industry officials, equivalent to the total steel output of the U.S. and Russia combined. Unless some steel plants are closed, the central government reasons, prices will continue to fall, along with profits, and any hope that steel plants will be able to repay the loans they use to finance their expansion will be dashed. For this reason the State Council (central government) has called for consolidation of the industry, with just five major producers occupying 45% of production by 2011. It is likely that pressure upon the Jilin provincial government to agree the merger with Jianlong came mainly from the central government, which regards private companies as a positive force for achieving savings and increased productivity.

Jianlong is a privately-owned conglomerate set up in 1999, which ranks 158 out of China’s 500-largest companies, with 40.79 billion yuan ($6 billion) in 2008 sales, according to its website. Tonghua ranks 244 out of the top 500 enterprises. The company posted a profit of 42.8 million yuan in June, reversing a loss from last year’s same period. This reversal in Tonghua’s recent fortunes explains the renewed interest from Jianlong, which acquired a minority stake in the company in 2005, but then pulled out as Tonghua lost money amid the global downturn. It was announced last week that Jianlong would buy in again, only this time taking a 65 percent stake. Workers and local people see the Jianlong bid as a blatant case of asset-stripping. The company, and the unfortunate Mr. Chen, made no secret of its plans to razor the workforce.

Quite probably the old management of Tonghua, wanting to block Jianlong’s takeover for their own reasons, had a hand in Friday’s events. It seems this is now the main track of the police investigation, although 20 Tonghua workers have been arrested so far. Information about Chen Guojun’s stratospheric seven-figure salary was widely leaked before his arrival at the Tonghua plant last week. It is possible that workers were egged on by former bosses in the attack on Chen.

Stop privatisation, defend jobs

Workers will welcome the news that the Jilin provincial government has decided to stop the merger plan with Jianlong. The Xinhua news agency said the government halted the plan “to prevent the situation [i.e. worker unrest] from expanding.” But this is not enough and does not yet represent a clear victory for the workers’ struggle. The Tonghua factory has been shut down now on the grounds of law and order and the police investigation. But this is also undoubtedly intended to make it harder for workers to congregate and discuss their next moves. The provincial government has conspicuously only ruled out a merger with Jianlong. It has not issued any statements that the threat of privatisation is removed or any guarantees for existing jobs and pension entitlements. Workers at Tonghua must continue their struggle and deserve the support of other workers in China and internationally.

In our (Chinese language) reports on the chinaworker.info website we have put forward the following demands for this struggle to reach a successful conclusion:


Mobilise mass pressure to stop the privatisation of Tonghua Steel immediately; build factory committees, democratically elected worker representatives should take over control and management of the factory.
Tonghua workers should organise an independent trade union, for collective negotiation with the local government to achieve real workers’ democratic control of the workplace, and drive out any private company’s managers and bureaucrats.
Release all arrested workers and worker representatives, against any repression and harassment by the regime and police.
Elect an independent investigation committee with workers and other third party representation to look into these events, including the process of privatisation, repression by police and actions of the state bureaucracy.
All socialists and the left should unite in support of Tonghua steel workers’ struggle against privatisation, against capitalism and against bureaucratic dictatorship. Linking the Tonghua steel workers’ struggle with the Baoding garment workers’ struggle, to put the case for a socialist labour movement in China.

Finally, chinaworker.info believes the only way to end the current crisis is to eliminate capitalism and bureaucratic dictatorship, through democratic organisation of the working class and masses from below to plan the economy under public ownership, and to achieve real democratic socialism.

[ckaihatsu]

["Bossnappings" have] the same effect as killing the boss in the long term, plus it doesn't allow the bourgeois media to vilify the workers.


*I've* been keeping my ears wide open on this one, but all I've been hearing is a deafening silence from the bourgeois press -- *they've* been sticking to the empirical facts on this one -- there's no ritualistic moralizing over this one, as we might expect...(!)





Apparently the workers are not getting blamed for this; the merger is off.





Four senior cadres were fired subsequently and the provincial leader said local officials had been "rude and rough-handed" in dealing with disputes.





Central authorities have repeatedly stressed the need to maintain social stability, in the face of economic uncertainties and ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic in October.


So what does this tell us about class solidarity? That it's *invaluable* in helping you keep your jobs, even / *especially* if something unfortunate should happen to your class enemy in the process.





The incident underscores the increasingly violent disputes in China from northwestern Xinjiang province to southern Guangdong, as the global economic crisis brings simmering conflicts to a head, Liu Kaiming, a labor-relations researcher in China, told the news service.


This sums up the ruling class strategy at this point -- they would rather support and showcase pockets of separatist violence, like the Uighurs, in order to make bigger fireworks than anyone else. When workers, like at the Tonghua plant, can *beat* the capitalists, they *don't* want lingering public attention on an event that they *lost*, hands down.





Another point that should be understood is that China is as capitalist as it gets. There is no difference between working for some transnational corporation or the Chinese state (which really is itself a large corporation). When surplus labor still exists, when workers have to work more than is socially necessary for their well-being--- that's capitalist exploitation. Whether the surplus value, or profit, ends up in the hands of individualist capitalists or a capitalist bureaucracy..it's still being extracted. Workers are still being exploited.


Agreed.

[puke on cops]

This made my day.
I'm not really going to moralise over the death of a human being when they didn't themselves think as to what they were doing to the lives of thousands of people.

No sympathy for the enemies of the working humanity.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

I'd be on their side, but that doesn't mean I'd support their strategy.
Another criticism I have against this action is that it is still putting the power in the hands of the executives - in other words, they still assume that they have to change the minds of the executives before they can get anything done.
I'm kind of surprised no-one else has picked up on this. Surely if you're killing the executives, then pretty much by definition you're not putting power in their hands?

[cyu]

Surely if you're killing the executives, then pretty much by definition you're not putting power in their hands?

Here a few possible tactics:

1. Kill one executive and then hope that "convinces" the other executives or politicians to implement policies you like. That is indeed putting power in their hands.

2. Kill all executives and, after that, implement your policies yourself. That does indeed take power away from them. However, this is not as likely to win you supporters as not killing them. Regardless of whether you personally believe the killing of capitalists is justified or not, most societies tend to see murder as immoral and thus the average person in the community may not be as friendly to you as you like.

3. Ignore all executives and, after that, implement your policies yourself. I would say this is tactically much more effective in terms of propaganda. You avoid having to deal with any ethical issues regarding murder or "justified execution". However, just because you're ignoring the executives, that doesn't mean you should let your guard down. I'd recommend the employees still prepare for self-defense, arming themselves if necessary, and gathering support from the local community.

[Sarah Palin]

I am only opposed to the killing of innocent people. In the 21st century, I don't think any factory manager can be considered innocent. On an average day, they carry out the orders of the CEO: to maximize profit no matter what the cost is to the workers.
Since the end of the Cold War, most governments in the world, save Cuba and a few others, have gotten increasingly more conservative and anti-worker every election cycle. It's come to a point, where to get the most menial progress, workers have to resort to killing their managers. While I think the action would have been more justified during a revolution, any violent revolutionary act against the ruling class is definitely a step in the right direction. But to the point of factory violence, I say dammit, there needs to be more. I get so ticked off at the complacency of the American worker, despite their dire situation, that this bold action is a breathe of fresh air.

[RotStern]

YES Victory for the working class!!
That fucking stupid executive maybe a few executives will think more before they exploit the chinese like they are slaves.

Good job comrades!

Working Men of All Countries UNITE!!:)

[Dowshy]

Not too shabby China...:)

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Here a few possible tactics:

1. Kill one executive and then hope that "convinces" the other executives or politicians to implement policies you like. That is indeed putting power in their hands.
I think you're being too purist here. No, these workers aren't instantly abolishing all hierarchies and creating anarchist communism. But the power relationship between a worker and an executive who makes worker-friendly decisions because they're scared of being lynched is massively different to the power relationship between a worker and an executive in any other situation. It's not removing all power from the executives' hands in a single go, but it is leaving them with a lot less power than they had before.

[cyu]

No, these workers aren't instantly abolishing all hierarchies and creating anarchist communism. But the power relationship between a worker and an executive who makes worker-friendly decisions because they're scared of being lynched is massively different to the power relationship between a worker and an executive in any other situation.


So which do you prefer? 1, 2, or 3? From your previous post, it seemed like you preferred #2, but now it seems like you're backing down and supporting #1 instead?

[The Ungovernable Farce]

So which do you prefer? 1, 2, or 3? From your previous post, it seemed like you preferred #2, but now it seems like you're backing down and supporting #1 instead?
I prefer whatever is possible at any given time. The limits of the possible depend on many things, including the confidence of the workers involved. If they feel capable of #1, but nothing else, then we should be celebrating them for choosing that over #0 (doing nothing and allowing things to continue in the old way), not condemning them for failing to tear down all hierarchies in a single blow. If a group of workers go on strike, that's less good than them occupying their workplace and taking it over, but my first instinct will still be to support their strike, not tell them off for not occupying.

[cyu]

we should be celebrating them for choosing that over #0 (doing nothing and allowing things to continue in the old way), not condemning them for failing to tear down all hierarchies in a single blow. If a group of workers go on strike, that's less good than them occupying their workplace and taking it over, but my first instinct will still be to support their strike, not tell them off for not occupying.

I don't disagree - like I said above, if I were there, I would support them and urge them on, but still suggest tactics that I think would be more effective than others. And I indeed agree that sometimes you're limited by what's convenient or safe for the employees (they have their own families to take care of after all), which is why I favor raising the minimum wage and increasing funding for welfare - even though in the end I know that they're just crap band-aids on the festering disease of capitalism.

[Red Saxon]

China isn't Communist by any means...the government is just using it an excuse for keeping the people quiet.

Long live the free workers of China!

[Gravedigger01]

could the not have just taken a note out of the Hondorus Armies books.Fly the manager to a new country.While I agree with there goals I don't think they should have killed him

[khad]

Looking at this thread, I can't help but smile at the irony. People here (including me) express their solidarity towards the workers in this killing, and yet when working class community activists target major drug traffickers raking in millions of dollars a year (ie bosses of the drug trade), it's suddenly "terrorism" against the working class.

[cb9's_unity]

I have always wondered whether or not I was a pacifist. This is largely because I think violent action in the first world is almost entirely futile. However from what I can see these workers acted completely appropriately. They got a delegation together, confronted the manager, and when he did not side with them they did what they had to do.

If this is the way class warfare has to be done in china, so be it.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

could the not have just taken a note out of the Hondorus Armies books.Fly the manager to a new country.While I agree with there goals I don't think they should have killed him
Um, I don't think many impoverished Chinese workers have spare planes lying around.

[Gravedigger01]

you know what I mean.They didn't have to kill him

[Pirate turtle the 11th]

Looking at this thread, I can't help but smile at the irony. People here (including me) express their solidarity towards the workers in this killing, and yet when working class community activists target major drug traffickers raking in millions of dollars a year (ie bosses of the drug trade), it's suddenly "terrorism" against the working class.

Fucktard nationalistic gangsters shooting dealers so they feel like big men< militant workers killing their boss.

[khad]

Fucktard nationalistic gangsters shooting dealers so they feel like big men< militant workers killing their boss.
The community behind them is working class. Who are you to judge?

[Pogue]

The community behind them is working class. Who are you to judge?

I think the main dispute was whether or not this is true. At this moment in time no one has provided a source showing the community is behind such actions, whereas if the workers themselves did the killing it is clear they supported it.

[Forward Union]

I support the actions of these workers, and communities that kill drug dealers.

[PRC-UTE]

I think the main dispute was whether or not this is true. At this moment in time no one has provided a source showing the community is behind such actions, whereas if the workers themselves did the killing it is clear they supported it.

Now that's not true at all. Your memory's getting a bit convenient now.

I even typed up an excerpt from a book on the Provisional IRA by Bishop and Mallie. The authors are not at all pro-republican, quite the opposite, and they admit the IRA were bombarded with demands for action to be taken against criminals, and that these actions enjoyed widespread support. The author stated something to the effect that most people in the Catholic ghettos felt criminals punished by republicans deserved it.

There were of course instances where actions against criminals caused a backlash. However that doesn't change the fact that communities requested republicans to carry out attacks on criminals, and many locals only supported the republicans because they did this service.

I'm not saying for good or bad here...just that it's reality.